by Herb Gunn

The Diocesan Convention offered delegates a chance for some frank conversation about the support for the 2009 ministries of the Episcopal Church throughout the diocese, the financial realities facing every congregation, and some steps ahead that call for serious discernment and decision-making in a financial environment that leaves the entire world dumbfounded.

Convention set one concrete course: a special convention next spring that will review the 2009 budget and respond to the Diocesan Council’s assigned task of preparing “one or more proposals for a sustainable budget for the balance of 2009 and beyond.”

This is not an opportunity to roll up the carpet at midyear and drastically slash program and staff positions. As the bishop told Diocesan Council in its organizing meeting on November 13, Diocesan Convention approved the 2009 budget and called for using the Extended Ministries Fund at the level necessary to offset income shortfalls.

Council should move quickly to reassure staff that drastic cuts that would impact their employment and service to the diocese will not be made by amendments from the floor of a one-day special convention. Such assurances will go a long way toward giving the diocesan staff the confidence they need to work diligently and without excess worry for their families and personal finances.

The other reason that the special convention is neither the time nor the place for mid-year budget adjustments is that no consideration or provision has been made for staff severance allocations. In lieu of paying into government unemployment insurance, the Diocese of Michigan lives by a longtime employment policy to provide severance compensation to employees whose employment is terminated due to no fault of their own.

Diocesan Council should be mindful that both the employer and the employee benefit from a policy that lifts the monthly payroll expense on the institutions and gives reassurance to the employee that they will not be cut loose—particularly in this dreary Michigan employment climate. But note that during a lengthy discussion at the October Diocesan Convention, which could have led to cutting the 2009 budget by $800,000, scarcely a nod was given to how the severance obligation would be honored.

While there has been no specific budget consideration of this standing commitment, the recent practice has been to draw these funds from the appreciated value of the Extended Ministries Fund, as Diocesan Council did in December 2006.

However, the appreciated value reserves are depleted and council has nowhere to turn to fulfill this obligation. It is imperative that any future budget projections fully account for the financial impact of any staffing reductions in the proposed budgets set before Diocesan Convention. Fourteen years ago, when the diocesan staff was reorganized and several staff positions were eliminated, there was no planned provision for staff severance other than rolling the expense into the 1995 operating budget. The unexpected burden crippled the new programmatic initiatives of the recently divided and restructured Diocese of Michigan.

Unlike many major and minor businesses and institutions that find themselves in the midst of unforgiving financial challenges, the Diocese of Michigan has a resource at its fingertips that will help the diocese navigate some rough water, both in its ongoing support for ministry and the personnel that has facilitated that ministry.

But efforts to prepare proposals for a sustainable budget must not neglect to include obligations that are linked to benefits already enjoyed or assume these obligations are so minor that careful planning isn’t required.

The special convention is a welcomed opportunity for the continuation of some frank conversation about church finances—and coming as it does at the beginning of the budget discernment for 2010, the time will serve as an appropriate budget hearing with representation from every single congregation.

In this challenging financial climate, we should ask ourselves, for instance, is every congregation with paid staff aware and compliant with the diocesan policies on severance allowances? What challenges do they—do we—face in reassuring our church employees that our church’s commitment to justice and fairness in the workplace applies to them?

We should not view the special convention as a chance to look back and undo the decisions of the October Diocesan Convention, but rather we should look forward to what kind of commitment to ministry are we prepared to make and what measure of support will be possible for the future.

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